I think some of you overestimate the cleave from Frozen Orb. Its a 1min cd and u have to time it well with adds.
Looking back to ToT u only have one fight where u could cleave all the time(council) and this fight was more dominatet by Nethertempest then icelancespam due to Frozen Orb.
The actual mastery shifts the dmg from Icelance to Frostbolt. With the icicles cleaving you shift the dmg from the 10 second window of FrozenOrb to the 50 sec without them.
If the numbers are right i dont see a downside.

Lei Shen, during phase 2 and 3 with the ball lightning, the current mastery boosted ice lances is an example where the orb->ice lance cleave damage is extremely useful. In 5.4 in a similar situation, will still be good but it will represent a fair chunk less damage as mastery no longer boosts the IL cleaves. Allowing orb to proc icicles as well would give some oomf back into the Orb->IL spam cleave scenario.

Its not a huge issue, but its one they could look at while they are still tinkering with the mastery.

Or Frozen Orb could generate them, since that's about the only time you Ice Lance spam.

This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense as the change in Mastery (at least what I was led to believe) was to tune down burst and equalize PvP. The whole idea of Frozen Orb on a bunch of adds (i.e. Lei Shen's ball lightning adds) so you can Ice Lance spam is burst damage.

Whereas the premise of the Icicle Mastery seems to be (as other posters have commented) an ignite-like additional damage except that it's now centered on what you're targeting instead of on the target as a DoT provided you build up the first 5 icicles. The alpha (or purge) launch via Ice Lance could be a source of "burst" damage but as it is on the PTR, the individual launch speed prevents this.

Despite this flaw, this does make for an interesting mechanic of seeing just how many icicles you can "chain" together in 1 cast of Ice Lance. Especially if the icicles are not affected by Haste but FB and FBB are.

Come to think of it, that might be an interesting competition to have, a whole bunch of frost mages seeing how many icicles they can chain.

Imo the boring but most effective change is simply to buff the damage that the orb itself does. No one is going to stand next to the orb in PvP so its not a huge burst buff, but it'd give back that 1 minute AoE CD feeling to frozen orb.

Alternatively, blizzard can address the fact that aside from frozen orb/ice lance, mage AoE on large packs is really disappointing even after the buffs to flamestrike and such. Comparing our non-frozen orb AoE to say fire and brimstone or howling blast is just depressing.

These new changes to Icicles still doesn't address frost mages haste and crit capping in 543 gear

If they get the numbers right and actually try to make frost on par with fire/arcane then mastery could become the new stat to stack. Which would be awesome to be able to switch between frost and arcane depending on the fight.

Imo the boring but most effective change is simply to buff the damage that the orb itself does. No one is going to stand next to the orb in PvP so its not a huge burst buff, but it'd give back that 1 minute AoE CD feeling to frozen orb.

Alternatively, blizzard can address the fact that aside from frozen orb/ice lance, mage AoE on large packs is really disappointing even after the buffs to flamestrike and such. Comparing our non-frozen orb AoE to say fire and brimstone or howling blast is just depressing.

The orb loses the ability to benefit directly from mastery too, which was an issue in PvP (player in deep freeze, getting hit by orb and and everything else). So yes, it could be buffed. I suspect 2-target cleave is better than it is on live, but that's an entirely different case from mass AOE. For mass AOE to benefit from mastery even a little, I think AOE crits should have a chance to trigger an AOE version of an icicle release (doing less damage per target than the icicle would normally do, but more on total). I would put the procs on crits only because I want shatter to matter with AOE. Well-timed freezes with AOE are a fun mechanic with a nice reward on live, but much less rewarding with Icicles.

Haste is very good for AOE, especially after Frostburn is gone. However, if single target is severely soft-capped on haste and starts shifting towards mastery, that's another factor where AOE is going to become weaker.

I think Frost trash AOE is good on live even though the freezes are so fragile that you have to be really careful with timing. It can't beat Elemental shamans, but I'm generally close and when looking at complete logs including trash & bosses, I'm often #1 on damage done. Part of the good trash damage is also from using glyphed DF with NT. Even if stuns are on DR, a GCD-less DF still allows Nether Tempest to be applied on the target so it gets Shatter and Frostburn.

AOE is not a huge balance concern, but I think the "fun factor" should also be considered and that's pretty important too.

If they get the numbers right and actually try to make frost on par with fire/arcane then mastery could become the new stat to stack. Which would be awesome to be able to switch between frost and arcane depending on the fight.

100% agree, I'd LOVE that. If those two specs had the same stat priorities...omg...I'm arcane now sitting at about 82% mastery raid buffed, I'd love if I was able to switch specs depending on the fight. Would be the best patch ever

Yes, effectively making this a passive "Increases FFB, FB, and WEllyBolt by 1.75% per point of Mastery", with a SMALL exception of whenever you use Ice Lance (Where you cash in on the bonus damage quicker).

There's pretty much no difference between this and any passive damage increase Mastery, minus the cool effect and the delay in which we get this bonus damage.

Uses the same signature for over a year, just randomly gets infracted for it recently.
Placeholder signature is placeholder and will hopefully make me finish my shit.
Oh yeah, I'm a Druid and stuff.

Yes, effectively making this a passive "Increases FFB, FB, and WEllyBolt by 1.75% per point of Mastery", with a SMALL exception of whenever you use Ice Lance (Where you cash in on the bonus damage quicker).

There's pretty much no difference between this and any passive damage increase Mastery, minus the cool effect and the delay in which we get this bonus damage.

Which is just perfect in my opinion. The new mastery looks cool, feels cool and is easy to tune just because of its simplicity.

I think some of you overestimate the cleave from Frozen Orb. Its a 1min cd and u have to time it well with adds.
Looking back to ToT u only have one fight where u could cleave all the time(council) and this fight was more dominatet by Nethertempest then icelancespam due to Frozen Orb.
The actual mastery shifts the dmg from Icelance to Frostbolt. With the icicles cleaving you shift the dmg from the 10 second window of FrozenOrb to the 50 sec without them.
If the numbers are right i dont see a downside.

No one speaks about CMs. In CMs the nerf comes not from the fact that Icelances dont work with mastery anymore. Its the fact (nothing) works with this new mastery.
But i dont think mages will kicked out of every CM-Group. Sure u wont get the times u get before but imo CMs where not balanced at all.
Everyone could get the goldachievment for the armory.
Getting the best realmtime is something where u dont ask for balancing and fairness. U just pick the 5 best speccs. Its not good but it hurts only a very very small fraction of the player base. (really really small compared to the base of PvP and PvE-Players for which this mastery was created)

What matters is what portion of our damage scales with a given stat and how well that portion scales. The mastery scaling on Ice Lance was shifted into Frostbolt. I guess the question is if there's a point where it becomes not worth casting at all. This would mean that the DPET of Frostbolt would be higher than that of Ice Lance. At high haste, both end up at the 1 second cap. Ice lance has a far higher chance to crit, but then Frostbolt generates an Icicle. If it turns out that the expected damage (at 28% crit) from Frostbolt + the Icicle is higher than Ice Lance, then I suppose the spec is in big trouble.

Let's say Frostbolt hits average 90k. 28% crit and 40% mastery boost the expected damage to 90k * 1.28 * 1.4 = 161k. After the changes, Ice Lance may end up at around 170k. So yeah, we are getting close to where if we have 100% haste (to get Frostbolt to cast in 1 second), it will not matter if you cast Frostbolt or Ice Lance with FoF. Our average haste is however lower than 100%. I don't think Ice Lance will be obsolete in 5.4.

Quick calc:
Frostbolt is: (1728 + 166.1%SP + Mastery) * 0.75 (regarding the casttime 2.0 vs an instant 1.5) = 1296 + 124.575%SP * Mastery
IceLance is: (336 + 32.3%SP)*4*0.25 = 1680 + 161.5%SP
To set this even:
1296 + 124.575%SP * Mast = 1680 + 161.5%SP
124.575%SP * Mast = 384 + 161.5%
Ignoring this 384 Basedmgdifference we can say:
124.575 * Mast = 161.5
Mast = 1.2964
So with 30% mastery casting FB is better than IL.
But this was calculatet with basecasttimes. As we are stacking haste IL caps at 1 second while FB comes near and near.
Assuming Meta is up both have a executetime of 1 second. In this case FB is superior to IL.
I hope i calculated everything right.
If this is true they need to change something. With increasing Haste and Mastery we go back to an Frobocanon.

don't you need to take crit chance in your calculations? around 25% for Frosbolt and 100% for IL?

And to Tiga, my concern is not that IL will become useless, is that it doesn't scale with our last secondary stat left. It means that like alwalys frost won't scale enough, comparing to Fire or Arcane.

Don't forget tha in the current state, the worst stat for fire, contribute more to the dps than our best stat in Frost.

Without the last buffing of Mage Bombs, and the RPPM system favoring haste spec, Frost Pve mage would have be dead since a long time.